CELEBRATE LOVE!

I can't imagine a greater reason to celebrate than love.  As I've mentioned before, my sister is having the ultimate celebration of love this summer, so we're in the midst of wedding planning!  I'm so honored to be her maid of honor and am LOVING it!  I even asked my mom (jokingly) if there was such thing as being a professional maid of honor, because I would totally do it.  Since the beginning of January, our family has been neck deep in looking for venues, caterers, photographers, planning favors and centerpieces, etc.  Any of you married folk out there know already how much is involved in planning a wedding.  I thought I knew, but geez!  It sure does consume you!  She has a budget of $10,000 to plan this wedding.  That's a pretty decent wedding budget, but also a challenge because wedding costs are high.  So, we're trying to be creative and finding ways to give her most of what she wants while keeping conscious of the cost.  We already booked the venues!  She'll be getting married at a beautiful church called West End Church of Christ.  She fell in love with it for the long aisle, the colors of the walls, the elegant arches and white columns.  

 

We'll then head about 5 miles up the road and have the reception at The Commodore Ballroom in Vanderbilt's Student Life Center.  It's a neutral, classy, large space that she can pretty much do what she wants with.  

Then, last weekend we went to the Nashville Bridal Show to get some ideas.  I told my sister we have to start taking pictures of planning.  We'll want to remember all the fun we're having and have pictures to remind us of that!

My mom who must have been blinking (hehe) and two sisters.
This place was serving really yummy lavendar lemonade
 in tiny little martini glasses.  It was yummy!

This looks like an easy DIY way to do menus.
You could customize it to your wedding with
scrapbook paper, ribbons, rubber stamp designs, and a computer

A beautiful table we saw.  She's trying to pin down
what exactly she wants and an all white, silver,
and glass table is an option she's considering.  

She is using this color blue as an accent color, but I mainly took the picture
because of the unique way they braided the fabric in the back of the chair.  

After the show, Kim and I went to Barnes & Noble for lunch/coffee and also looked at wedding books.  This picture is out of the book Handmade Weddings.  They had some great ideas, but this was a cute invitation Kim liked.

Well, that's all for now.  I'll keep posting our adventures in wedding planning, and would also love to hear about ideas you have.  Have any of you had a wedding on a tight budget?  What ways did you save money but still incorporate what you wanted?